"I shouldn't have to explain it to anybody, the team or President Obama or anybody."

CLEARWATER, Fla. — With every player seated in Bright House Field's clubhouse, Charlie Manuel stood in the middle of the horseshoe to deliver his annual spring training speech before Saturday's first official full-squad workout.

It could have been his last one in a Phillies uniform.

Manuel, who has become the winningest manager (727 wins) since taking the reigns before the 2005 season, is in the last year of his contract.

The 69-year-old had a list of topics to cover in his speech: playing better defense, improving their base runners and the importance of remaining resilient even when things get rough.

One of the few subjects he didn't bring up was his contract status.

"I would never do that," he said.

And he doesn't want it to be something that's a topic of conversation throughout spring training or the regular season.

"This is the last time I'll answer about my deal, OK?" he said.

Then he used the next few minutes to vent.

"I should never have to sit and tell somebody what we've done," he said. "If I needed to get established as a major league manager, I definitely did that with kind of the help of my players. … What we did is sitting there in front of you. My record is just as good as anybody's in baseball. I don't want to sound like I'm an 'I-me' guy because I'm not. But really, I mean just look at it. What's wrong with it? You can look at it any way you want to. But it's what it is.

"I shouldn't have to explain it to anybody, the team or President Obama or anybody. Seriously."

Manuel is referring to what his team has accomplished while he's been in charge. During his eight years at the helm, he has guided the Phillies to five National League East titles, two pennants and a World Series. Four times his teams have won at least 92 games, his clubs have never had a losing season under him and the 102 wins in 2011 set a single-season record for any Phillies manager.

His team will have a difficult time reaching the century mark in wins this year, but he spent a lot more time thinking about Ws than dollar signs.

"I'm not worried about it at all," he said of managing in the last year of his contract. "I want to stay totally focused on us winning. Us winning is more important to me than my contract."

Manuel is hardly the first manager in recent years to go through a season in the final year of his deal. Cincinnati's Dusty Baker did it last year and then got a two-year extension at the end of the season. Yankees manager Joe Girardi is in the last season of his contract right now. It was also the case for St. Louis' Tony LaRussa in 2011. He ended up retiring.

That isn't in the plan Manuel has.

"I've been in baseball 51 years, and right now I definitely plan on staying in baseball and I plan on managing," he said.

Some may wonder that with Manuel's age creeping up — he's the second-oldest manager behind Washington's Davey Johnson (who's 70) — and his previous health problems, which are extensive.

Manuel had a heart attack that required quadruple bypass in 1998, and diverticulitis which caused an abnormal pouch in his colon to rupture in 2000. Manuel then needed emergency surgery, and while the doctors were poking around, they discovered he had kidney cancer, which meant more surgery, a colostomy bag and scar tissue that was growing on top of his small intestines. As a result, he couldn't digest food and he needed his gall bladder out. Plus, his body was loaded with infected fluid. He then had two IVs for four months so the fluid could keep draining.

Those days, though, are long gone, he said.

"That'll definitely get your attention," he said. "I think especially when I had so many things go wrong, one after the other. Before I hadn't really been sick. My health had always been great. … Everything that went wrong with me, felt like it kept snowballing. I'm in way better shape than I was when I first came to work here."